I was called today with a
seemingly random question from a friend. 'Has capitalism caused anyone to
die from hunger?'

This happens to me more often
then is reasonable to assume. I teach history and therefore people assume
I know everything they need to know at any time. Just wait until I get my
masters degree. Then I get to boss history around because, that's what a
masters degree is for, right? History, OBEY!

Anyhow, the question got me
thinking. Has capitalism caused anyone to starve from hunger? Yes it has.
People have most certaintly died from hunger in capitalist countries, even
the United states which somehow still maintains its facade of intrinsic
goodness. Why is there doubt about this? We all know the pictures of
uncaring factory owners with big sigars, forcing children to work, forcing
families to buy crap vegetables at their stores and even children made to
work. Is this new to anyone?

Capitalism
and the people of Earth

I was puzzled by how Michiel's
brother couldn't know this. Although I don't really know him and he might
have been the guy who tried to shut everyone up at Michiel's birthday
party by shouting the word 'mouth!' at them its reasonable to assume he
has at least a basic understanding of history and its implications.

So, brother of Michiel who's
name I've kinda forgotten. Just take a look at
this illustration from somewhere around 1900 and see how common folks
actually saw capitalism:

Common folks very commonly
assumed capitalismw as evil and with good reason. Its baqsically an
exploratory system that makes the most of business ventures and resources.
The profits usually go to a very select group of people and the workers
who do the actual physical work get paid for their troubles. That's the
idea. Its a good idea too, potentially for the workers as well because
capitalism has the potential to generate a lot of profit if performed with
skill. Early capitalists, from Mercantilism on turned making profit into a
artform.

There are problems with people
making money, getting most of the money.

At the period from the
eighteenth century, the commercial stage of
capitalism originated from the start of the British East India Company and the
Dutch East India Company. These companies were characterized by their colonial and expansionary powers given to them
by nation-states. What do you suppose companies do when a nation-state
tells them to do anything to make a profit?

Its called colonialism and its
a surpridingly kind word for what is in essence countries and companies
under them looking for profit in land that doesn't belong to them and
murdering the shit out of any locals that don't agree with all their stuff
being stolen. This is capitalism in its crudest form. making a profit over
the backs of anyone who happens to be there.

Child
labour and capitalism

Of course, it could easily be
denied that colonialism comes from capitalism as it happily continued when
the big companies for the most part got out of the way. The Dutch East
India company eventually disappeared and the official Dutch government
settled in Indonesia, not to leave for 300 years. Making a profit
turned into 'the white man's burden', a ludicrous concept where Europeans
take it upon themselves to educate the poor coloured man to proper western
standards. Ok, so that's an extreme example. Capitalism doesn't have
to lead to permanent colonialism.

No, it can just as easily lead
to massive abuse of the workers in its own home countries. If you're
interested do a google search for 'child labour 1900' and let your jaw
drop open if you haven't seen any of that before. Yes, capitalism lets
people starve. It also lets children do hard manual labour, lets people
lose limbs in machines and lets them get deadly
pneumoniae in damp cellars.

This also
happened in the US in the nineteenth century. The low value of child labor in agriculture may help explain
why children were an important
source of labor in many early industrial firms. Capitalism, my friend.
If people can work and you don't have to pay them much then it happens. It
was only the national government which ended child labour and much to the
chagrin of factory owners both here, in the Netherlands and in the United
States. Here, it was the child law of van Houten that ended it in 1874 but
it was only truly ended in 1900 with the arrival of forced education, a
source of much chagrin of many children right to this day because the
little dumbasses don't know how good they have it....

Capitalism
and DEATH!!

Ok, so there have been no
capitalism firing squads and that's mostly because capitalism doesn't
represent a geo-political whole and as such no fixed spheres of influence.
Its an economic system and even communist China has seen the benefits and
has delved in. Firing squads usually belong to oppressive political
regimes which can adhere to fascism (popular in the thirties of last
centiry), communism (still popular in N-Korea), socialists, bolsjewists
(why not..), fundamentalists of any religion, maoists, and every flavour
of nationalists. Capitalism as such is hard to define politically. Mostly,
capitalist countries are democracies although China is busy flounting that
in our face. There is even a theory that capitalist, democratic states never go to war with each other although that could just
be coincidence.

Capitalism doesn't kill by
firing squad or gass chamber. It kills by exploiting the workers and
neglecting their needs for as long and cheaply
as possible before someone stops it. During the construction of Hoover
dam, laborers at the Dam had no
voice in the settling of wages, hours of labor, working conditions,
safety or living conditions. It was appalling. Why could this happen?
There was noone to check if conditions where right. There was no strong
government organ to monitor conditions. The dam was important for America
and so Frank Crowe, lead man of the project, got to do what he wanted and
if dozens of people had to die due to poor conditions, then so be it. The
essence of the capitalistic mind.

The modern world

Nothing has really changed.
Capitalism still thrives on exploiting people, governments and resources
and there is no alternative. Communism hasn't worked out and anarchism is
so stupid we might as well all start praying to the machine god for our
baked toast each morning.

Is unbridled capitalism the
answer to modern day problems, like I understand you believe, brother of
Michiel? No, it isn't. Really, it isn't. Remember the child laws that
protected children from manual labour in factories? Government. There are
many such examples. The government in a democratic country is chosen by
the people and in order for it to be re chosen it has to do something for
the people, have their interests at heart. Corporations and companies
don't aswer to anyone but their stock holders and so making a profit tops
everything. Your brother lost his job due to capitalism. Its an
understandeable system but tough as hell. The govenment has made sure he
now gets money in order to not go broke and be forced to live under a
bridge (although that might be an improvement over the house he now
occupies.... OOOOO BURN!)

Look, I'm no big fan of the
government either. They never get everything right but unbridled
capitalism is an infinetely worse idea. People only out to make profit
will not look to your interests. We see plenty of examples here in the
Netherlands. Gas prizes have never been higher due to speculation of stock
brokers. Public transport has taken a huge downward step since it was
privatized and gotten a lot more expensive. The Dutch railway system is
run by the NS, which might be an abreviation for Neverending Sorrow. Due
to privatizations it is now more expensive then ever before to heat up
your house and electricity is now so expensive it might be cheaper to just
pay 5 Polish dudes to walk continuously in a treadmill to generate the
stuff.

Then now
what?

Please, stop listening to
people who say borderline retarded things like 'abolish all income tax!'.
Yes, that might have worked in the 17th century when dirt roads were
considered high tech but in this century I want to drive over a road that
is properly constructed and not by the lowest bidder from Taiwan by
Chinese slave labour. I've watched Tea party video's and Sarah Palin
interviews and unlike most of Ron Paul's followers I've read some of his
'issues' on his website. There is no easy answer. The government is
necessary. It keeps a check on capitalism and capitalism provides us with
wealth. Smaller government means more liberalism for the big companies and
they use that freedom to make money. Over your back. Just look at the
crisis of 2008. Car companies sucked at making money because most of the
profit didn't go to developing new products but to already obscenely rich
managers and stock brokers. Give the government the power to do something
about this. A strong government keeps capitalism in check. This is
absolutely a necessary evil.

And finally, because its
ridiculously easy to find pictures that make fun of capitalism, here's my
favourite: